US, Saudi Arabia seek way out of Yemen: Analyst

Press TV has interviewed Navid Nasr, a political analyst, to discuss the remarks made by a senior member of Yemen’s Ansarullah movement that Saudi Arabia will not end its bloody war on Yemen unless Yemeni forces intensify their retaliatory attacks.

The following is a rough transcription of the interview.

Press TV: How do you feel about the importance of the Yemeni resistance in the face of this Saudi-led aggression on their country?

Nasr: Well, its importance… I mean what other choice is there? The other choice is to give way, to surrender. The fact of the matter is that the war has taken a devastating toll on the infrastructure of Yemen, on civilian life in Yemen. Medecins Sans Frontieres has released a report talking about how daily life, the conditions of daily life in Sana’a and in some of the bigger cities in Yemen have become really for a while intolerable.

This compounds a lot of things; geopolitically for the US, this is not good; it is not good for the countries that are worried about massive influx of refugees; it is not good for the Saudi state itself even though it has been able to…, I mean not really an accomplishment, it has been able to destroy the civilian infrastructure of Yemen but has not been able to win a victory of any kind, a decisive victory in its war particularly on the ground. And in fact the Yemeni resistance forces, the Ansarullah, the Yemeni army, the Popular Committees have been able to inflict pretty devastating losses on the Saudi military and on the mercenaries that they have employed.

And again I do not know how much comfort it gives to Saudis to be able to kill civilians and destroy infrastructure at will – they are doing great at that – but the flip side of the coin to that also is it is proving to become a PR nightmare now for the US and they are having to answer questions even in the UN Security Council in terms of what they are doing, where the money that they are giving to the Saudis is going to, what kinds of weapons they are giving them. Questions that they do not really want to answer in a body that is supposed to…, I mean let’s be honest, from its inception, the UN was supposed to be a fig leaf to give cover to US foreign policy and the US should not be – in its own eyes, at least in the eyes of the US government – should not have to answer those kinds of questions before the UN, so it is quite embarrassing.

Press TV: So I am wondering, another Ansarullah member said that essentially the Saudis are looking for a respectable out now because as you said this war has failed. Will they get that out through these discussions?

Nasr: They would like to. Whether they will or not is up for debate but I think both the US and the Saudis want to sort of gingerly inch away from where they are right now with regards to Yemen and sort of pretend that the whole thing did not happen, that kind of thing. And they could do it. It could happen again. The bodies that we are talking about – the international bodies – are favorable to that kind of outcome but they have sown the seeds for a lot of things that are eventually going to come back to them.  

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